Fortunately for them, the man who was directly in charge of all the captives was a Chinese who harbored secret sympathies for the young men, so the punishment handed out was not as severe as it might have been.
Song decided to make another escape attempt two years later, in 1943. "As laborers, we were allowed to write to our families. So I wrote a letter to my parents back in Shandong asking whether they knew anybody from our village who had moved to Jilin in the previous years. It turned out that there was one," he said.
Song's parents wrote back, telling their son the exact address of his fellow villager in Jilin. Song immediately wrote to that man, notifying him of his coming. "I made no mentioning of my life at the labor camp. And he assumed that I was a traveling businessman," Song said. "Then one day, I fled－at that point, I knew my surroundings well enough that no turning back was necessary."
For two days solid Song walked until he stood right before the door of his savior, 100 km from the camp site. "I told him everything. He let me rest for a few days before getting me a pass through his connections," Song said. "Then I took a train that took me to my parents."
Japan officially surrendered to China on Sept 9, 1945. Song, who had experienced too much to stay in his little village in Shandong, came to Beijing the following year. He became prop manager of the newly-founded Peking Opera Company, where he worked until retirement.
For the past 70 years, he has been living in his small courtyard home just a few minutes' walk away from Tian'anmen Square, the symbolic heart of the country. He has problems with his legs and he can barely walk. "I believe the origin of the pain lies in the days spent digging iron ore in the dark, damp tunnels," he said.
However, Song said the scene that had seared the most indelible impression on his mind was not one of suffering, but one of loss.
"I still remember the way our captain fell during our last battle, in the blinding sunlight of the day. He was hit by a bullet," Song said. "We were merely two meters from each other. In fact, I had never been that close to him before that point－physically and mentally."
In times of war, questions of life and death can be almost academic. Death can arrive at any time and no plans can be made for life beyond the battlefield. Death is not something to be scared of, but something to be accepted, said Dong Jimin, who, incredibly in December this year will turn 112.
"Death was just an integral part of life that could come at any time, with or without an emphatic note," he said.
Lives cut short
Dong joined the Chinese resistance soon after the September 18th Incident. That day in 1931, Japanese military personnel detonated a small quantity of dynamite close to a railway line owned by Japan. The explosion was so weak that it failed to destroy the track and a train passed over it just minutes later. But the Imperial Japanese Army accused the Chinese of causing the blast and responded with a full invasion that led to the occupation of Northeast China, then known as Manchuria.
Decades later, on Sept 3 last year, when China held a grand military parade to commemorate the end of WWII, Dong watched the live TV broadcast at home. His son, Dong Xiwu, will never forget what happened next.
"When the vehicle carrying veteran soldiers came into view, my father propped himself up on the back of a chair and saluted."
For Song, every ceremony serves as a reminder of lives cut short in an instant and of young men never allowed to age.
"A young man, my fellow inmate at the labor camp, once talked to me about his plans to run away," Song recalled. The man died in the mine after part of it collapsed. "He said to me, 'I have to get out of here－I'm engaged'," Song said.
